Comment: Book is in average Used-Good Condition. Sent Airmail from New York. Please allow 7-15 Business days for delivery. Also note: This book may or may not contain highlighting, writing, or other various markings and/or show normal wear for a book in this condition grade. Excellent Customer service.

If you are a student of mathematics, a scientist working in fields affected by knot theory research, or a curious amateur who finds mathematics intriguing, The Knot Book is for you. With this engagingly written and illustrated book, you will be working with some of the most advanced ideas in contemporary mathematics.

More About the Author

Product Description

Amazon Review

In February 2001, scientists at the Los Alamos National Laboratory announced that they had recorded a simple knot untying itself. Crafted from a chain of nickel-plated steel balls connected by thin metal rods, the three-crossing knot stretched, wiggled, and bent its way out of its predicament--a neat trick worthy of an inorganic Houdini, but more, a critical discovery in how granular and filamentary materials such as strands of DNA and polymers entangle and enfold themselves.

A knot seems a simple, everyday thing, at least to anyone who wears laced shoes or uses a corded telephone. In the mathematical discipline known as topology, knots are anything but simple: at 16 crossings of a "closed curve in space that does not intersect itself anywhere", a knot can take one of 1,388,705 permutations, and more are possible. All this thrills mathematics professor Colin Adams, whose primer The Knot Book offers an engaging if often challenging introduction to the mysterious, often unproven, but, he suggests, ultimately knowable nature of knots of all kinds--whether nontrivial, satellite, torus, cable or hyperbolic. As perhaps befits its subject, Adams's prose is sometimes... well, tangled ("A knot is amphicheiral if it can be deformed through space to the knot obtained by changing every crossing in the projection of the knot to the opposite crossing.") but his book is great fun for puzzle and magic buffs, and a useful reference for students of knot theory and other aspects of higher mathematics. --Gregory McNamee--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

"Adams is an expert in knot theory, and this shows in the clarity and accuracy of his writing, and in the rich store of examples and problems . . . We are going to see much more of knot theory and its applications, and this book is an excellent place to start." --"Nature"
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

Well-written, a good introduction to a mathematical research topic that requires only high-school level mathematics as background. Includes good applications to biology and chemistry, and written with a friendly, easy-going style.

I think I need to go away and work at this a bit more. I've come into this from a graph theory module at undergrad level, and a certain amount of abstract algebra at (probably) masters level, but I just haven't managed to break through this yet.

The problem's either with me, or with the exposition. I'm going to have to give it another go.

All the same, it's well and entertainingly written, just that I haven't a clue what it's on about.

I bought this book following on from an undergraduate topology course in which I enjoyed the geometric topology, and knot theory seemed a reasonable next step. It really is a basic introduction to the topic - I now have a good idea about the various ways to describe knots and determine if 2 knots are the same, and I know the difference between knots, links and braids.

It is fairly well written, but at times seems a bit disconnected. It certainly gave me what I wanted on the subject without either being too basic or too technical.

The title of my review? The cover of the book, if you miss out the subtitle, looks just like the sort of thing you might buy for a budding ship's captain so he can rig his sails properly. It isn't.

This elementary introduction of knot theory is widely referenced in the academic literature. The author works hard to make basic ideas behind knot theory accessible. Knot theory has developed extensively since this text was first pubished are many important devlopments are not addressed. However, as was no doubt intended, it remains a very helpful guide to fundamental aspects of knot theory. The exercises are well worth exploring. A useful text still.

Book was purchased with the intent of getting direction into more complicated areas of knot theory, in particular adjacency matrices and using probability mean functions as a weighting technique of mapping.